These belting chimneys are actually in Canada, but it's a cool picture so let's go with it. Image: Tony Webster

The latest instalment of ourweekly series, in which we use the Centre for Cities’ data tools to crunch some of the numbers on Britain’s cities.

It’s the 21st century. We get it.

Climate change is an existential threat, global warming is bad, carbon emissions are largely to blame, and if we don’t do something terribly drastic soon, everything we know and love will perish in a Hollywood-movie orgy of rising sea levels, cataclysmic extreme weather events, and men looking seriously at enormous banks of screens.

And yet we carry on, firing up fossil fuel power stations, driving petrol-chugging cars, and producing lots of stuff in emission-belting factories.

Cities, inevitably, are a big part of this. They are congregations of a lot of people, consuming resources, driving to work, and working in CO2-emitting offices, warehouses, and factories.

But some are worse than others. Londoners, who are less likely to sit in badly polluting cars because they have the wonderful tube, emit less CO2 per capita. There may be loads of them, but relative to how many there are, the emissions aren’t that terrible.

Swansea and Middlesbrough, however, are terrible.

Hover over the dots to see the figures for individual cities. Graphic: Centre for Cities.

By the most recent figures in 2014, CO2 emissions per capita stood at 26.78 tons in Swansea, and 26.22 tons in Middlesbrough. For context, the national average is 6.25 tons, and the third most emitting city is Newport, which belts out 7.46 tons per capita, while London only manages a paltry 4.4.

Middlesbrough hit it off as a big booming iron town. In the Victorian age amid the throes of the industrial revolution, Middlesbrough was known as ‘Ironopolis’, and Dorman Long – a successor firm to one of the big beasts of steel production of the industry – built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, became a major part of the nationalised British Steel Corporation, and only ceased producing steel on Teesside in 2015, not yet covered by the data we have available.

Up until 2010, the area also had a steel plant run by Corus, which later became Tata Steel, the company that got caught up in a steely face-off last year over production in Port Talbot – part of the conurbation of, you guessed it, Swansea.

Both have strong power production bases, too. The Swansea area includes Baglan Bay, a bit fat gas-fired power station that has been trundling away since 2003, while Middlesbrough has a phenomenal four active fossil fuel power stations running.

As the area is on the edge of one of the largest historic coalfields in the country, that makes sense, but for a metro area with just under 400,000 people, it seems a little excessive.

But what seems strange is the change in these emissions. Not only are Swansea and Middlesbrough the most CO2-emitting cities in the country, they’re also getting worse.

Looking at the actual change in emissions per capita from 2010 to 2014, you can see that both cities are the only places in the countries that are polluting more.

Top five gross changes in emissions per capita 2010-2014. Click to expand. Image: Centre for Cities

Middlesbrough is up by 8.33 tons, while Swansea is up by 0.13 tons.

Top ten percentage changes in emissions per capita 2010-2014. Click to expand. Image: Centre for Cities

By percentage, the figures for Middlesbrough are pretty astonishing – it polluted 46.58 per cent more in 2014 than it did in 2010.

But it’s a complicated game of numbers.

Top ten percentage changes in emissions per capita 2005-2014. Click to expand. Image: Centre for Cities

If you look right back to the earliest data, from 2005, you can see that Swansea is the only city that emitted more per capita in 2014 than it did almost a decade earlier – up by 4.44 per cent, or 1.14 tons per person.

But Middlesbrough’s not far behind. By percentage change, it has had the smallest decrease in emissions, churning out 16.38 per cent less CO2 per person than it did in 2005.

Top ten decreases in emissions per capita 2005-2014. Click to expand. Image: Centre for Cities

But because it was so far ahead to start off with, its change is also the biggest gross fall – emitting 5.13 tons fewer per person in 2014 than in 2005.

The picture is unclear. Steel manufacturing in the UK is in a crisis period, with deals and government interventions only a short-term blip in a long-term story of decline, closure, and job losses.

As more data becomes available, and the futures of Britain’s steel plants become apparent, it’s likely that all UK cities will be emitting less CO2 per person year-on-year – and the gradual decommissioning of coal and gas-fired power stations and replacement with clean, shiny, cuddly renewable energy stations (like the big fat tidal power station they keep talking about building in South Wales) will only further that effect.

A couple of weeks ago, someone on Twitter asked CityMetric’s editor about the longest possible UK train journey where the stations are all in progressive alphabetical order. Various people made suggestions, but I was intrigued as to what that definitive answer was. Helpfully, National Rail provides a 3,717 page document containing every single timetable in the country, so I got reading!

(Well, actually I let my computer read the raw data in a file provided by ATOC, the Association of Train Operating Companies. Apparently this ‘requires a good level of computer skills’, so I guess I can put that on my CV now.)

Here’s what I learned:

1) The record for stops in progressive alphabetical order within a single journey is: 10

The winner is the weekday 7.42am Arriva Trains Wales service from Bridgend to Aberdare, which stops at the following stations in sequence:

The second longest sequence possible – 8 – overlaps with this. It’s the 22:46pm from Cardiff Central to Treherbert, although at present it’s only scheduled to run from 9-12 April, so you’d better book now to avoid the rush.

Not quite sure what you’ll actually be able to do when you get to Trehafod at half eleven. Maybe the Welsh Mining Experience at Rhondda Heritage Park could arrange a special late night event to celebrate.

There is a chance for a bit of CONTROVERSY with the last one, as you could argue that the final station is actually called London St Pancras. But St Pancras International the ATOC data calls it, so if you disagree you should ring them up and shout very loudly about it, I bet they love it when stuff like that happens.

Alphabetical train journeys not exciting enough for you?

2) The longest sequence of stations with alliterative names: 5

There are two ways to do this:

Ladywell, Lewisham, London Bridge, London Waterloo (East), London Charing Cross – a sequence which is the end/beginning of a couple of routes in South East London.

4) The greatest number of stations you can stop at without changing trains: 50

On a veeeeery slow service that calls at every stop between Crewe and Cardiff Central over the course of 6hr20. Faster, albeit less comprehensive, trains are available.

But if you’re looking for a really long journey, that’s got nothing on:

5) The longest journey you can take on a single National Rail service: 13 hours and 58 minutes.

A sleeper service that leaves Inverness at 7.17pm, and arrives at London Euston at 9.15am the next morning. Curiously, the ATOC data appears to claim that it stops at Wembley European Freight Operations Centre, though sadly the National Rail website makes no mention of this once in a lifetime opportunity.

6) The shortest journey you can take on a National Rail service without getting off en route: 2 minutes.

Starting at Wrexham Central, and taking you all the way to Wrexham General, this service is in place for a few days in the last week of March.

7) The shortest complete journey as the crow flies: 0 miles

Because the origin station is the same as the terminating station, i.e. the journey is on a loop.

8) The longest unbroken journey as the crow flies: 505 miles

Taking you all the way from Aberdeen to Penzance – although opportunities to make it have become rarer. The only direct service in the current timetable departs at 8.20am on Saturday 24 March. It stops at 46 stations and takes 13 hours 20 minutes. Thankfully, a trolley service is available.

9) The shortest station names on the network have just 3 letters

Ash, Ayr, Ely, Lee, Lye, Ore, Par, Rye, Wem, and Wye.

There’s also I.B.M., serving an industrial site formerly owned by the tech firm, but the ATOC data includes those full stops so it's not quite as short. Compute that, Deep Blue, you chess twat.

10) The longest station name has 33 letters excluding spaces

Okay, I cheated on this and Googled it – the ATOC data only has space for 26 characters. But for completeness’ sake: it’s Rhoose Cardiff International Airport, with 33 letters.

No, I’m not counting that other, more infamous Welsh one, because it’s listed in the database as Llanfairpwll, which is what it is actually called.

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